


Proving Himself

by BrandonStrayne



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Baking, Enemies to Friends, Facebook: The Pen15 is Mightier, M/M, house arrest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:49:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26166667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrandonStrayne/pseuds/BrandonStrayne
Summary: Being confined to house arrest will make a man do anything to stay sane, even befriending Harry Potter.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 110
Collections: Pen15 Challenge 13: Love in the Time of Quarantine





	Proving Himself

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Pen15 is Mightier "Love in the Time of Quarantine" challenge.
> 
> I am forever indebted to [OllieMaye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/olliemaye) for all of their patient and enthusiastic beta help. Your grammar knowledge is unrivalled and I'm so grateful you're there to turn my z's to s's.

Harry took a deep breath as he looked up at the expansive front door of the mansion. He’d never actually seen Malfoy Manor in all its splendour, but even he knew that the building must have seen better days. Although never a battle site in the war, the exterior facade of the mansion nonetheless looked battle-scarred and pockmarked, with burn marks and chipped stone peppered across the surface. Harry wasn’t sure whether the damage dated back to the period where Voldemort was a resident of the Manor, but he thought the crumbling facade was a fitting analogy for the Malfoy legacy.

Smirking at that thought, Harry lifted his arm to pick up the large silver door knocker that was moulded into the shape of a dragon’s head. However, before his hand could even make contact, a small jet of fire shot out of the beast’s head and he yanked his hand back, shaking it to dispel the pain.

He was looking down at his palm, examining the damage, when the door was jerked open and he took an instinctive step backwards.

“What the hell do you want?”

Harry’s hands squeezed together in involuntary fists at the cold voice of his old nemesis, only to make him hiss in pain as his fingers dug into the burn on his palm. He forced himself to unclench his fists and he pulled out his wand, transferring it to his left hand and clumsily casting a rudimentary Healing Charm at the wound. Despite Hermione’s insistence that he really needed to practice with his left hand and be able to cast ambidextrously in case his right arm is incapacitated if he was going to be an effective Auror, he’d so far proven to be decidedly right-handed.

Unsurprisingly, Malfoy made no move to help him and cast an amused look at his shoddy healing job which, though silent, spoke volumes. Looking up, he stared expectantly at Harry, his head sticking through the crack between the door and the frame, the door open the smallest possible amount, as if he was afraid Harry was going to force his way in at any moment.

Spending even one more minute in this foul pile of bricks and corruption was precisely the  _ last _ thing that Harry could even imagine asking for, so Malfoy’s misplaced protection of his ancestral home was almost enough to make Harry laugh out loud. Instead, he settled for a more sedate rolling of his eyes.

“One of the conditions of your parole was that you had to submit to weekly visits from an Auror, in case you forgot,  _ Malfoy,”  _ Harry injected the last name with as much disdain as he could muster and was rewarded with a pinched look on the snooty git’s face.

“As if I could forget,” Malfoy snapped, but rather than opening the door and letting Harry in, he closed it fractionally, making it look almost as if Draco’s head was floating independently of a body. Harry fought back a snicker at the thought. “Where’s Berrywine, then?”

Harry crossed his arms in front of his chest, making sure that his wand was very obviously visible in the holster buckled around his waist. He wanted Draco to know that Harry thought he was of such little consequence that he didn’t feel the need to protect himself—that Draco was about as scary as a Crup. The beginning of this encounter with his old rival had left him feeling wrong-footed, but Harry was determined to turn the tables and regain the upper hand.

Draco’s eyes darted down to the wand at Harry’s hips and lingered there, but eventually, he relented and let the door fall open. Reversing course, Draco left the door open and walked away, leaving Harry standing in the doorway as the blond disappeared through a doorway to the left of the foyer.

Harry closed the door and followed Draco into the room, taking a moment to take in the room. It was large, lined on both sides with dark wood shelves which Harry could imagine were once filled with pricey first editions. Now, though, they were practically barren, a tiny collection of books gathered together on one shelf at the far end of the room on one of the shelves. Beneath them, Draco was hunched over a small table which held a cheap Wizard’s Chess set. As Harry crossed the room, he could see the white Queen tapping her foot as she looked up at Draco expectantly.

“Are you playing chess?” Harry asked, before he could think better of it.

Draco didn’t look away from the board he was studying as he answered with a droll, “Obviously. It must have been those sharp observation skills that made the Aurors so keen to have you join their ranks.”

“Screw you, Malfoy,” Harry spat, anger launching the words from between his lips before he could gather his thoughts and construct a pithier insult.

Reaching out, Draco wrapped his fingers around one of the black knights, shifting it away from him and to the right, studying the board for several moments before slowly pulling his hand away and relinquishing his hold on the piece.

“That’s a checkmate,” Harry said, just as Draco’s king released his hold on his sword and it went clattering to the board, signalling it was admitting defeat.

“You distracted me,” Draco huffed as he grabbed a slender wooden box from the shelf to his left and brushed the pieces into it. “What do you want, Potter?”

“I already told you,” Harry said, amused at Draco’s petulance. “I’m here for your weekly Auror check-in.”

“Yes, but what are  _ you _ doing here? Surely checking in on one disgraced former Death Eater is beneath  _ The Saviour of the Wizarding World _ ,” Draco sneered as he shoved the packed up chess board off to the side of the table.

“Yeah, well you’ve already managed to infuriate the rest of the DMLE and nobody is willing to come out here anymore. You may not have a wand right now, but that tongue of yours is just as effective as a weapon.”

Draco’s lips thinned out and his eyes instinctually darted down to where Harry’s wand was, even though the chess table was blocking the view. Recovering quickly, Draco sat back in the chair and adopted an air of forced casualness as he crossed his arms in front of his chest and gazed nonchalantly at Harry.

“You’d think a bunch of wizards and witches that have been trained to protect Wizarding Britain from all manner of dangers would have a little thicker skin.” One corner of his mouth pulled up with an amused smirk before he continued, “And I notice you didn’t object to the honorific. Is that how I should address you now, Potter? It’s quite a mouthful, perhaps we could shorten it? Would simply ‘Saviour Potter’ be acceptable to you?”

Harry grit his teeth together, trying to quell his frustration. He knew Draco was just trying to get under his skin—he’d been doing it since they were eleven, after all.

“Auror Potter will be fine, thanks,” he said as politely as he could pretend to be while he pulled out the report form he would need to fill out to complete this home visit and get the hell out of here. “I know you don’t want me here almost as much as I don’t want to be here, so why don’t we just get this over with and then we can both be free of each other, yeah?”

Draco’s mouth opened as if he was about to launch another pithy dig at Harry, but to Harry’s surprise, he just closed it again and nodded curtly.

“Alright then,” Harry said as he rolled out the top of the very long parchment onto the chess table in front of him and pulled out a biro from his pocket and held it poised over the parchment as he read out the first question, “Have you had any visitors since your last home visit?”

~*~

The next time Harry had a scheduled home visit with Malfoy, he’d barely made it up the front steps before the wide front door was yanked open and he was greeted with a very flustered-looking Malfoy.

“This really isn’t a good time, Saviour Potter, so if we could perhaps reschedule this tedious visit until tomorrow, that would be most helpful.”

Without waiting for an answer, Draco started closing the door and Harry dashed up the rest of the stairs and stuck his foot in the jam, preventing it from closing. Draco shot an annoyed look down at Harry’s foot before looking back up at Harry. Now that Harry was closer, he could see that Draco’s normally pale skin was even paler as it seemed to be covered with some sort of fine powder.

“Are you wearing makeup?” he asked in confusion.

“What? No, why would you think that?” Draco replied with an equal measure of confusion before abandoning the door and Harry and walking over to the large gilded mirror that was hanging on one side of the foyer. “Bugger!” he shouted, before brushing at his face, sending a fine mist of white powder floating down to the ground around him.

Once he seemed satisfied, he turned back around and hit Harry with a 1000-watt fake smile. Well, 1000-watt for Malfoy anyway, meaning Harry could actually see a small sliver of the other man’s teeth. “I apologise that you had to come all the way out here, but as I said, if we could just reschedule this for tomorrow—”

Harry’s instincts were standing at attention. Maybe it was the unnerving way that Draco Malfoy was smiling at him, or the fact that he seemed desperate to chase Harry away, but Harry suspected that the more desperate Draco was to be rid of him, the more Harry should stay put. The git was obviously up to something.

“No, we cannot reschedule. In fact, you’re acting quite shifty. What are you up to, Malfoy?”

Harry expected Draco to flare out defensively and strike back at him, proclaiming his innocence, but to his surprise, the momentary anger that flitted across Malfoy’s features quickly dissolved away and the other man slumped back against the wall. With his head hanging, he mumbled, “Same thing I have been ‘up to’ for the past year, Saviour Potter. Remaining locked up in this cage of a house and trying to keep myself from going stark raving mad.”

Harry felt discombobulated by Draco’s response. A part of him was sure that this must be yet another of Malfoy’s tricks and that he must not let his guard down, but Malfoy’s words really did sound genuine and a small part of him felt the tiniest bit of pity for Malfoy. An Auror had been going to visit Malfoy biweekly for over a year now, ever since Draco’s trial had ended and he’d been sentenced to two years of house arrest rather than Azkaban, but the visits were designed to monitor Malfoy for indiscretions and were never particularly focused on Malfoy’s well-being.

“And how are you doing that, exactly?” Harry asked.

Draco didn’t respond right away, just studying Harry with an expression that Harry couldn’t begin to decipher, but then he seemed to come to a conclusion and he turned and began walking away. “Come see for yourself,” he called over his shoulder as he gestured for Harry to follow him.

Harry did, going down a corridor of the Manor that he had never been down before and watching as Draco rounded the corner and disappeared out of sight for a moment. When Harry had caught up with him, he found Draco standing in a large kitchen with slightly dingy-looking cupboards encircling the room, which had an elegant white marble floor that was speckled with streaks of grey. Harry could imagine that the room would be a chef’s personal dream, but it appeared to be in desperate need of a good scrubbing.

“This is how I am currently trying to do that,” Draco said, gesturing down at the assortment of metal bowls and various baking tools that were spread out haphazardly on the island in the middle of the kitchen, as if that explained anything.

“You’re going to have to be a little more specific,” Harry said as he walked closer, inspecting various bowls of what looked like day-old gruel for some clue as to what was going on.

“I’m baking bread,” Draco said.

“You’re what?” Harry asked confusedly as he looked up to see whether Draco was trying to take the piss.

“BAKING. BREAD,” Draco said more loudly, emphasising each of the words as if Harry was just deaf and hadn’t heard him rather than that he had said something so outlandish that Harry was still failing to comprehend what he’d heard.

“I heard you, I just… did not expect you to say that,” Harry explained lamely as he went back to studying the various bowls of gooey masses which, now that he thought about it, did vaguely resemble dough. “Why?”

“Because I’m bored out of my mind and have endless days with nothing to do, so I thought, why not?” Draco said, shrugging.

“You must really like bread,” Harry said, again eyeing the many bowls of dough. He was pretty sure there was enough dough here to open a bakery.

“I’m trying a number of different recipes and starters, trying to find the best combination.” He spun around and grabbed a parchment with a grid of rows and columns and a variety of numbers in it. “So far they have ranged from merely adequate to truly abysmal, but I think I was using too much water in my previous starter, so I’m experimenting with three more batches using incrementally less water in each.” At this, Draco pointed to three equal-sized bowls to his left which were covered with white tea towels.

Harry felt like he had been dropped into an alternate dimension or that somebody must be playing some sort of elaborate trick on him. He was having trouble believing that he was here, standing in Draco Malfoy’s kitchen, discussing the intricacies of baking your own bread.

“I see…,” was all that Harry could manage to say. “How do they taste?”

Draco’s mouth pinched at Harry’s innocent question and he huffed out an annoyed breath. “To be honest, like total shite.” Harry couldn’t stop the little snort of laughter that escaped him at Draco’s statement and Draco looked up at him, startled, before a tiny flicker of a smile fought its way onto his lips. “I’m getting better, but the first few loaves were definitely overcooked, and then there were a few that would have been better suited as bricks for repairing the Manor than as a consumable, then the next few were far too...moist.”

Draco’s nose scrunched up and he got a disgusted look on his face, as if he could still taste the texture that word implied, and Harry fought back another laugh. Draco hadn’t ripped into him the first time he’d slipped and laughed at him, but Harry wasn’t sure how long his luck would hold out in that regard.

Without really thinking too much about what he was saying, he found himself offering to help Draco. “I don’t know much about baking bread myself, but Mrs Weasley always bakes her own and it’s very light and airy. I can maybe ask her if she has any advice for you, if you want?”

Draco looked surprised for a moment before he studied Harry with suspicion. Eventually, he asked, “Why would she want to help me?”

Harry shrugged. “Honestly, she might not. I know you’re not exactly her favourite person, what with your family holding us hostage during the war and your aunt trying to murder Ginny and everything”—the two men glanced away uncomfortably, the heavy memories of those times settling over the room and cooling the air between them, as if they were Dementors—“but I can ask her.”

“Well, that would be...” Draco cleared his throat,” I would appreciate that.” After a pause, he tacked on, “Thank you...Potter.”

The air between them was still tense and kind of awkward, but Harry supposed the fact that Draco settled for calling him ‘Potter’ rather than ‘Saviour Potter’ was at least something.

~*~

Although Mrs Weasley had been initially standoffish when Harry had raised the topic at the next Weasley family dinner, he had seen her outer shell start to crack as he’d told them all about Draco’s attempts at baking and shared how he thought Draco might be lonely. She’d declared Draco a “poor dear” and conversation had gradually moved onto Ginny’s upcoming match against the Wimbourne Wasps, which Ron had been more than willing to share his advice for to a decidedly uninterested Ginny.

Mrs Weasley looked vaguely distracted for the rest of the evening, as if she were ruminating on something, and so Harry wasn’t particularly surprised when he showed up to his next appointment with Draco to find Mrs Weasley there.

Harry stood at the front door for over a minute waiting for Draco to answer it, which was very unlike him. Normally, Draco seemed to practically be waiting at the door for him, pulling it open just as Harry knocked. This time, however, Harry had to dodge not one, but three bursts of fire from that infernal doorknocker before he heard a muffled “one second!” coming from behind the door and Draco finally emerged.

“Sorry about that,” Draco said as he ushered Harry through the door and shut it behind him. “I was in the kitchen with Mrs Weasley and I didn’t see you coming.”

Harry looked around the windowless foyer before asking, “About that, how do you normally see me coming? There are no windows here and I know you can’t Apparate without a wand, but you’re always standing here as if you knew I was about to arrive.”

He hadn’t stopped to consider before how Draco had managed to pull off the unsettling greetings before, but now he was curious. Draco, unfortunately, didn’t see fit to answer him and waved away the question. “Come on, Mrs Weasley was just showing me how to knead the dough properly.”

Harry found himself, once again, chasing after Draco as he retreated down the hallway to the kitchen. Stepping into the room this time, the changes were immediately obvious and it was already starting to feel homier than it did before. The cabinets were all polished to an impeccable white and there was a flurry of activity as an assembly line of dishes were scrubbing themselves clean in the sink before floating over to settle into a drying rack. There was also a large vase filled with fresh wildflowers sitting in pride of place in the middle of the island.

“Hello, Harry dear,” Mrs Weasley greeted him distractedly as she looked up from her hands, which were currently kneading a large ball of dough, before turning her attention to Draco, who circled around to the other side of the island to stand beside her. “Now, Draco, see how it’s starting to smooth out and it’s getting sort of springy? That’s how you can tell you’re almost done kneading. You try a few times dear.”

Mrs Weasley watched with her neck craned and her flour-covered hands resting on her hips, unconcerned with the powdery spots she was leaving on her dress, as Draco nervously took her place and kneaded the ball of dough once.

“Just sprinkle a little bit of flour...that’s it,” Mrs Weasley encouraged as Draco grabbed a pinch of flour and lightly dusted the top of the ball of dough.

Harry smiled at the scene, impressed as always with her generous nature. He laughed softly when she exuberantly proclaimed, “That’s a lad!” and squeezed Draco’s shoulders, leaving two floury handprints on the charcoal grey shirt. “Oh, sorry, dear!” she cried, realising what she had done, but Draco, rather than looking annoyed, had a bit of a sheepish look on his face and the tips of his ears had turned a faint shade of pink.

“Surprised to see you here, Mrs Weasley,” Harry jokingly greeted the matriarch of his adopted family.

Mrs Weasley let out a little snort and pegged him with a shrewd look as she pointed a floury finger at him. “I know you thought you were being sneaky, but I’m onto you, mister.”

Harry held up his hands, as if protesting his innocence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, really Mrs Weasley.”

“Like hell, you don’t,” she scoffed. “And how many times do I have to tell you to call me Molly? You’re not some wee sprog boarding the Hogwarts Express for the first time anymore.”

“At least once more, I’m afraid,” he said, dodging out of the way of the cloud of flour she threw in his direction.

“Cheeky bugger,” she mumbled as she pulled out her wand and promptly cleared away the mess she’d just made of the pristine kitchen. Draco looked surprised when she proceeded to point her wand in his direction and clean the handprints she’d left on his shoulders, mumbling what Harry was pretty sure was a thank you as he stared intently at the pleasantly round ball of dough in front of him.

“Should I maybe...come back?” Harry asked, glancing at the wristwatch that Molly and Arthur had given him on his 17th birthday and which he had proudly worn every day since. He still had to get back to the Ministry in time to file the home visit report before the Records Department closed, but he could probably give them half an hour or so to finish up what they were doing.

“Don’t be silly! Don’t let my being here stop you,” Mrs Weasley protested, waving her hand at Harry as if he was being absurd. Harry looked at Draco, who appeared mildly uncomfortable as he cast a nervous glance at Molly before looking back at Harry.

“Maybe… I could just borrow Draco for a few minutes and we’ll get this questionnaire filled out and then you two can get back to your bread baking?” Harry suggested. Molly seemed to pick up on the nervous tension that was radiating off Draco and now it was her turn to look mildly embarrassed.

“Oh, of course. How rude of me. I can come back tomorrow if you’d prefer?” she offered, smiling kindly at Draco.

“Really, Molly. It will only take us a few minutes,” Harry promised. In fact, it usually took them closer to an hour to get through the full list of questions, but Harry figured it would be fine to do a bit of an abridged version just this once.

“Will you wait until I’m back to put it in the oven?” Draco asked.

“Of course, Draco dear. I’ll just finish Scourgifying these cupboards,” Molly said as she threw open one of the full-length cupboards and began removing an assortment of canned goods and preserves.

Harry and Molly exchanged a glance before Harry turned to follow Draco down the hallway and into the barren study. He would be forever grateful for that day in King’s Cross when he met the Weasleys and they so generously welcomed him into their lives, and Mrs Weasley was perhaps the most generous of the whole lot. She may shout from time to time, but he knew that it came from a place of love, of which she seemed to have a bottomless supply.

Behind him, Draco closed the doors to the study behind them, closing them in together, and Harry was surprised to find that it didn’t feel ominous or threatening in the least. If he had told his younger self that he would ever feel completely at ease being locked into a room with Draco sodding Malfoy, he was pretty sure his younger self would have had him committed to the Janus Thickey Ward.

“Before we start, I just want to say…” Draco trailed off, and Harry was just about to ask whether he’d lost his train of thought when Malfoy continued, in a volume barely above a whisper, “thank you.”

“I’m sorry, what was that?” Harry asked, partly in jest, but also partly because he really wasn’t entirely confident that his ears weren’t betraying him. Was it really possible that, within the course of two weeks, Draco Malfoy had thanked him  _ twice _ ?

“Don’t be a git. You heard what I said,” Draco snapped back, but the words didn’t have any bite to them and the faintest wisp of a smile pulled at his lips. “Thank you, Potter. Merlin, I can’t believe I’ve had to thank you twice now in as many weeks,” he added, looking mildly discomforted.

Harry let out a chuff of laughter at the fact that Draco’s thoughts so closely mirrored his own. “I’d best stop doing you more favours then. I’m not sure either of our hearts could survive a third occurrence.”

Draco snorted at that and the small curve of his lips grew more pronounced before he shook his head and his expression settled into something far more neutral. Which, to Harry’s surprise, left him feeling just the slightest bit disappointed.

“We’d best get started on that scroll, or Mrs Weasley is liable to get impatient and start baking the loaf without me.

Harry was confident that was not something Draco would have to worry about—Molly would never go back on her promise like that—but regardless, he pulled out the scroll and started scanning the questions, skipping the more trivial and choosing only the ones that were of greatest relevance for the report he would have to write up.

Harry managed to cut their usual hour down to a little over fifteen minutes and he and Draco made their way back to the kitchen. They found Molly bent over and scowling at a particularly stubborn stain in one of the cabinets. Pointing her wand at the stubborn spot, she incanted, “ _ Impunctus Maximo _ ” before pushing herself to standing, evidently having finally vanquished the stubborn stain.

She jumped and clutched at her chest as Draco stepped up behind her and inspected the inside of the cabinet before speaking, “I tried every cleaning spell I knew to get that out and I couldn’t manage it.”

“Oh!” she cried in surprise. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!” She swatted playfully at Draco’s arm. Harry watched the parade of emotions that flitted across Draco’s face in quick succession before he finally realised that Molly was just teasing and wasn’t really angry at him. Harry felt himself feeling quite sorry for Malfoy, wondering what his childhood had been like if he had such trouble recognising playful friendliness.

Though, Harry supposed they had that in common. It seemed like he’d been an honorary Weasley for so long now that his life at Privet Drive almost seemed like a dream more than a distant memory. But he remembered, in that moment, what his life had been like before he’d gotten his Hogwarts letter. At least he’d had the Weasleys. Draco had spent his whole childhood in a home where emotions were viewed as a weakness and, as such, had to be locked away and kept hidden. A fresh wave of pity for Draco Malfoy washed over him.

Harry quickly schooled his expression as Molly turned to speak to him. He was sure that if anything even remotely hinting of pity was visible on his face when Draco looked at him, it wouldn’t matter that Harry had a wand and Draco didn’t. Harry glanced down at the stacks of cans and jars that were spread out on the kitchen island, inches away from Draco’s hand.

“Sorry, what?” Harry asked when he realised that Molly was staring at him expectantly and he hadn’t heard a word she’d said as he’d imagined those heavy cans being lobbed in his direction.

“I asked if you were going to hang around and have some freshly baked bread with us,” she repeated.

“Oh, no. I’ll leave you two to it. I need to get back to the Ministry and write up this report.” Harry found himself feeling strangely reluctant as the words left him. He actually did kind of want to stay—and not just because Molly Weasley’s homemade bread was the stuff of legend. He liked seeing Draco like this: the hard edges of his personality that he used as a protective barrier to keep people away sanded away, a little uncertain of himself and just a little bit vulnerable because of it.

Draco had gone out of his way to make Harry’s life even more difficult than it was already destined to be when they were in school, so it would make sense for Harry to revel in how far the Malfoys, and especially Draco, had been felled in the aftermath of the war. But by the time it was over and Voldemort was really and truly gone, Harry had found that he was just too tired to revel in the Malfoys’ floundering. He had just wanted to get through all the aftermath, the trials, the rebuilding, the healing, as soon as possible and just be  _ normal _ , for once.

Ron couldn’t understand back then why Harry had volunteered to testify on Draco and Narcissa’s behalf at their trials (though Harry had felt no compunction about letting Lucius Malfoy rot away the rest of his life in Azkaban). They had actually had a huge row about it, one of their biggest fights ever. Ron was still raw and grieving his lost brother and had accused Harry of siding with the enemy. Harry knew where he was coming from, but Ron didn’t have a monopoly back then on grief and agony, and Harry had met Ron’s grief-fuelled anger with seventeen years of pent up frustration and fury.

They hadn’t spoken for over a month, but eventually, Hermione had managed to lock them both in a room and told them to get over it because the three of them hadn’t gone through all of that only to break apart now. Angry words had transitioned to pushes and shoves, which had gradually turned into pulls, as they both finally gave in and removed the cork on all the emotions they’d been bottling up for so long. Hermione had discreetly pretended not to notice their tears as she came in later with two frosty mugs of Butterbeer for them.

Harry still wasn’t sure whether Ron agreed with him about why testifying on Narcissa and Draco’s behalf was the right thing to do, but he didn’t stop Harry, and he stood there in support of him every day that they had filed into that oppressive, morose courtroom to hear the fate of yet another of Voldemort’s supporters, even on those two days where Harry had shocked the Wizarding World be speaking in the defendants’ defence. 

“Maybe someone’s hit him with a  _ Petrificus Totalus _ and we just didn’t hear it,” Draco said as he smirked in Harry’s direction. Harry startled to and realised that he had drifted off inside his own head in thought, and that Molly and Draco were staring at him in amusement.

“Right, I should go,” Harry said, turning to go. He stopped, however, at Molly’s voice.

“That’s a fine way to say goodbye,” she chastised.

Harry could feel the flush of embarrassment creep up his neck and into his ears as he turned around and slinked back over to Molly’s side of the island. He made a point not to look at Malfoy as he bent down and let Molly clutch onto his head to pull him the rest of the way and close enough to be able to plant a kiss on his cheek, which felt cacophonous in that moment.

“I’ll see you on Sunday,” Harry promised as he wrapped his arms around Molly’s plump frame while she pulled him into a hug around the shoulders.

“I’ll see you then, dear,” Molly sighed as she let him go. “And don’t forget to bring that robin’s cube thing you were talking about last week. Arthur’s been driving me up the wall talking about it.”

“Rubik’s Cube,” Harry corrected her with a smile before he braved a quick glance over at Draco. Harry expected to find a mocking look directed at him, but Draco was watching the two of them with such an unguarded expression of longing and sadness that Harry quickly looked away before Draco noticed that he’d seen it. “I’ll see you at the same time next week, Draco,” Harry tacked on brusquely before beating a hasty retreat out of the kitchen. It wasn’t until he had made it out the door, down the long gravel drive and past the anti-Apparition wards that Harry slowed down and took a deep breath to settle his muddled thoughts enough to Apparate back to the Ministry without splinching himself.

~*~

Harry deftly avoided the jet of fire from the doorknocker and stuck his tongue out at the infernal decoration in a fit of gleeful spite. Unfortunately, his eyes were closed and he didn’t see the door open.

“Ever the epitome of maturity, Potter,” Draco said in a droll voice before stepping back and pulling the door open wider to motion Harry in.

“The knocker started it,” Harry rebutted childishly. “That thing is a menace.”

“An inanimate object doesn’t have the will required to be menacing. It just is,” Draco argued as Harry stepped past him and into the Manor.

Harry stopped a few steps into the cavernous foyer, looking around. Right away, he noticed a few small changes. There was a purple vase on a narrow wooden sideboard that had a riot of cheerful yellow and white flowers arranged in it. Beside it, there was a recent edition of Potions Master Quarterly that Harry recognised because of Hermione’s subscription to the magazine. She insisted that it was important to stay informed on the most recent advancements in Potion-making and that just because they were done at Hogwarts, it didn’t mean that their education was over. Personally, Harry couldn’t care less if it turned out that cutting the tips off of the lacewing fly wings cut the brewing time of Polyjuice Potion down by 18 minutes; the Ministry had an entire department whose job it was to brew the necessary potions for the other various departments and he was quite content leaving the particulars to them.

Breathing in, Harry’s stomach rumbled at the soft hint of cinnamon that lingered in the air. “It looks like maybe you’ve had a few visitors?” Harry asked innocently.

“I suppose I have you to thank for that, do I?” Draco accused. He tried to sound put-out, but he wasn’t very convincing.

“I could perhaps be convinced to exchange that thanks for one of whatever that is that you have baking now,” Harry said, nodding in the direction of the kitchen.

“Hmm,” Draco said, eyeing Harry suspiciously. “I’m not some charity case. You don’t need to send your band of merry men over here every other day to check up on me.”

“Don’t be daft, Malfoy. I would never subject any of my friends to you against their will. Besides, I have just as many women as friends as I do men.”

Draco’s eyes narrowed even further, but he didn’t push the issue and instead led Harry down the hall towards the kitchen once more. Six large cinnamon buns were sitting spaced out on a wire rack cooling and he carefully picked one of them up with a spatula and transferred it to a china plate with a band of silver around the outer edge. Harry’s mouth began to water as Draco picked up a bag of icing and began piping a generous drizzle over the top of the treat.

Finally, he seemed satisfied and he slid the plate across the island to Harry. “Would you like a cup of tea to go with that?”

Harry paused, his fingers already sticky with a small bite of the pastry halfway to his mouth. “That would be great, yeah. Thanks,” he quickly added, feeling like he should be polite.

With his back turned to Harry, Draco asked, “So if you aren’t behind my sudden rising popularity, how do you explain it?” Harry could tell that he was trying to sound casual, but Draco’s unwillingness to look at him as he used a tiny trickle of water to fill the teapot at a glacial pace told Harry that he was more invested in the question than he wanted to give away.

Harry diligently chewed the large bite of cinnamon bun in his mouth, which was perhaps one of the best he’d ever had (not too dry and just the right amount of warm icing), and stole a few extra moments of thought as he made a show of licking clean his fingers. Draco didn’t say anything during this, but his spine seemed to stiffen at the sound of sucking as each finger was cleaned.

“I didn’t  _ send _ anyone over here. But I may have mentioned you to a few of my friends over the last few weeks. A few of them seemed pretty curious about you.”

Draco turned around and set the teapot down between them on a thick cork potholder. “Do you mind? It will be faster than heating it up on the hob.”

“Oh yeah, of course,” Harry said, pulling out his wand and casting a warming spell at the teapot until the telltale whistling of steam filled the room. Harry thought he could guess which of his friends had probably been around to extend an olive branch, but he asked anyway, “So who’s been around to see you then?”

“Mrs Weasley has come by every other day. She seems intent on turning me into a baker.” Draco had a look of fondness on his face that Harry would have never thought he’d see, especially one directed at a Weasley. “And Loony Loveg—”

“Luna,” Harry cut him off, a burst of anger bringing a gruffness to his voice that hadn’t been directed at Draco for weeks now. Draco looked startled for a second before understanding seemed to dawn on his face and he cleared his throat and continued.

“Luna,” Draco said a little sheepishly, “Lovegood came over a few days ago. She brought those flowers in the foyer. She said she remembered from the last time she was here that the chizpurfles were quite agitated and that the magical flowers would help settle them.”

Harry nodded along, not at all surprised now by Luna’s rather unconventional observations.

“When she found out that Mrs Weasley has been teaching me how to bake, she got quite excited and she’s promised to come back this week with some fresh dirigible plums from her garden to make a plum pudding.” Draco shook his head softly, as if still slightly confused by his interaction with the former Ravenclaw. “Is she always like that?”

Harry chuckled. “Yeah. Half the time I have no idea what she’s talking about.”

“No, not that.” Harry glanced up in confusion at Draco to see that a grave look had taken over his face. “I mean, is she always so...kind?”

Draco looked a bit like he was going to sick up on the island and Harry sobered, imagining where Draco’s thoughts must have gone. He remembered when they’d found Luna imprisoned in the basement of this very house and how, even though she’d obviously been through many scary and traumatic things, she had still been very much the Luna he remembered. Still, it couldn’t have been easy for her to come back here, and not for the first time, he admired her unassuming bravery.

“Yeah. Yeah, she is,” Harry stated flatly. There was an awkward silence for a few beats before Harry broke the tension. Pulling out the scroll, he asked, “So, aside from Luna and Molly, have you had any other visitors?”

~*~

A few weeks later, Harry was back at Malfoy Manor. He was a little early this week because he had somewhere to be this evening. Although, a part of him was tempted to drag out the visit as long as possible and use it as an excuse to get out of the blind date that Ron had insisted on setting him up on this evening.

Ron had been pestering Harry for months to let him set Harry up with the new girl that they’d hired to help out at Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. Harry had put him off for as long as he could, but when Ron had suggested that perhaps the reason why Harry didn’t have any interest in being set up was that he was still carrying a flame for Ginny, Harry figured his luck had run out.

After he and Ginny had pressed the pause button on their relationship so he could go off to hunt Horcruxes, they had never really unpaused it. At first, Harry had figured that it was just because there was a lot of grief and healing to do. Ginny had just lost one of her brothers, after all, so it wasn’t like she was in the mood to sneak off and snog Harry whenever the opportunity arrived. And Harry didn’t want to pressure her. At least, that was what he told himself. Truth was, getting back together with Ginny wasn’t really something that he spent much time worrying about. Which was a bit odd, he supposed, but everyone had so many other things to focus on, like Fred’s funeral and tracking down Hermione’s parents to try and restore their memories, that nobody else seemed to question their prolonged separation either.

After a few months though, things had started to get back to a new level of normalcy and, still, Harry and Ginny didn’t reconcile. Ron had started suggesting that the four of them double date and Harry had been forced to confront his feelings and the fact that as much as he loved Ginny, he didn’t love her in that way anymore. Eventually, Harry had asked Ginny to sit down with him because they needed to chat.

Ginny had agreed and before Harry could work up the nerve to officially break it off with her, she had broken up with him. It had all come spilling out of her, how she and Neville had grown close in that year that Harry had been traipsing around the country hunting for Horcruxes. Ginny had told him how guilty she had been feeling, how hard she had tried to deny her feelings, and how hard it was for her to even look Harry in the eye anymore. This last confession had taken Harry aback, but when he had thought back on the last few months since that final battle, he realised it was true: he could count on one hand the number of face-to-face conversations the two of them had shared.

Harry thought it would have been natural for him to be jealous that Ginny had found someone else, but he realised that he wasn’t. He was just relieved that he wasn’t the “bad guy” for having made their split permanent. It felt a little weird at first when he saw Ginny and Neville, his former roommate, together, but they had been a couple for several years now and Harry was happy for them.

Harry hadn’t dated anyone since their official breakup, but that wasn’t because he was pining after Ginny or anything. He just hadn’t met anyone that caught his interest. He wasn’t really concerned by this, but his family seemed to be. Which is why they had launched a steady campaign over the last few months to set him up with pretty much every unattached witch they knew. He hoped that by agreeing to go out with Beryl, the new clerk from Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, at a minimum he could appease his family and pause the endless parade of eligible witches.

Unfortunately, Harry was so distracted thinking about his upcoming date and how eager the Weasley family was for him to find love, that he forgot everything he had learned about the infernal doorknocker and it got the better of him. Before he could dodge out of the way, a particularly powerful burst of fire emerged from the silver maw of the beast and the air was filled with the unmistakable smell of singed hair.

“Shit!” Harry yelled, scrambling back from the door and reaching up to feel the stiff, singed remnants of what were once his eyebrows.

Harry was so distracted by his predicament that he didn’t even hear the door open. “Thank you, Potter. That was a delight to witness,” Draco said, voice alight with barely suppressed mirth.

Harry was too distraught to even be annoyed at the fact that Draco was laughing at his misfortune. “Is it bad?” he asked, hopeful that the damage wasn’t as bad as he thought it was.

“It’s not great. But I’m sure everyone will love the unhindered glimpse at your scar.” Draco’s eyes zipped up to Harry’s forehead and seemed to linger there for a second before he smirked at Harry.

“Great, because I don’t get enough of people staring at it already,” Harry mumbled under his breath as he rubbed his hand over the scarred skin.

“Merlin, why are you so mopey? Just cast a Hair-regrowing spell. Problem solved,” Draco said, rolling his eyes.

Harry sighed, “I’ve always been pants at that spell. Every time I’ve tried it, I end up overshooting it and looking like Cousin Itt.”

“I don’t know what your cousin looks like, Potter.”

“He’s not my cousin, he’s… you know what, nevermind.” Harry gave up on explaining the reference.

“Get in here. I’m sure I have a bottle of Manegro Potion that will set you to rights.”

“You use Manegro, then, do ya?” Harry asked, momentarily distracted from his situation by the opportunity to tease Draco.

“I do not,” Draco shot back, flustered, as he ran his hand through his patented slicked-back mane of hair. “I’m sure it was just left here by a guest or something.”

“Okay, yeah,” Harry agreed, letting Draco have this since Harry really didn’t want to go out in public like this, let alone on a date.

Harry followed Draco up the stairs of the mansion and down the hallway. He stopped momentarily as Draco led him into a room which Harry realised must be the other man’s bedroom. Unlike the rest of the house, which was underfurnished and felt empty thanks to all of the stuff that the Malfoys had to sell off to cover their reparation payments, this room felt lived-in.

An antique four-poster bed, elevated on a platform, dominated the room, which to Harry’s surprise was not decked out in Slytherin greens. The bed was made neatly, the crisp white sheets topped with a sapphire blue duvet, the grey curtains of the bed pulled back to the posters. Stacks of books of various heights were scattered around the room, on the nightstand, the floor, and on top of the dark wood dresser. It looked like the entire collection of books from the study downstairs had migrated up here.

“Do you want this or not?” Draco asked as he popped his head out of the bathroom on the other side of the room. Holding up the bottle of Manegro, he shook it back and forth between his fingers in invitation.

“Yeah, yeah, I do.” Harry stepped into the bedroom, feeling a bit weird about being in Draco’s private space. He hurried across the room, eyes averted from the bed, and entered the large en suite bathroom. “This is nice,” Harry said as he took in the spacious room resplendent with white-grey marble.

Draco looked around, taking in the room from an outsider’s perspective. “Yeah, though I miss being able to use magic. It’s impossible to get the water to the right temperature with this Muggle plumbing.”

Harry nodded, understanding what he meant. He loved taking piping hot showers and Muggle water heaters never seemed powerful enough to get the water as hot as he would like it. “I’m surprised that the Manor even has Muggle plumbing,” he noted, surprised. He knew that a lot of old magical houses hadn’t been upgraded to include such Muggle conveniences, especially ones owned by the old pure-blood families.

“It didn’t originally,” Draco explained. “I had to have plumbing and gas added when I was sentenced to house arrest. Now, sit.”

Draco pulled a plush, white velvet-upholstered chair out from the vanity and spun it around to face Harry. Harry took a seat uncertainly as Draco circled around to stand in front of him, towering over him. Harry shifted uncomfortably as a kaleidoscope of butterflies took flight in his stomach. “You know, I’m sure it’s not that bad. I can just—”

“You look ridiculous, so stop being a baby and just let me take a better look at the damage,” Draco said shortly, cutting Harry off. Harry sucked in a surprised breath when Draco casually tipped Harry’s head back with a cool finger under his chin. His eyes fluttered closed when Draco’s other hand pushed his remaining hair back from his forehead and those cool fingers brushed over the raised skin.

There was a stretched moment of silence between them before Draco cleared his throat and stepped back, the cool touch leaving Harry’s skin with a lingering tingling sensation. “This doesn’t look all that bad,” Draco said, voice gruff. “I think a capful of potion and you’ll be back to normal. Fortunately, your hair always looks like a Augurey’s made a nest in it, so nobody should notice the difference.”

“That’s more like it. I was starting to wonder if you were ill or something, being nice to me. It’s almost reassuring that you’re still a git,” Harry said, tossing back the small dose of Manegro that Draco handed him.

“Careful, Potter. You don’t want to anger the person holding sharp scissors,” Draco threatened as he pulled a long pair of silver scissors out of one of the drawers in the vanity.

“What are those for?” Harry asked, eyeing the scissors nervously as he scratched at his forehead, the rapidly growing hair making him itchy.

“What do you think, Potter? The potion regrew  _ all _ of your hair, so I’m going to trim the rest of it.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think that that’s necessary.” Harry moved to stand up but Draco pushed him back down to sit with a hand on his shoulder.

“Relax, Potter. I’ve gotten really good at this over the last little while. Just sit still and let me do this and then you can be off on your merry way.” Draco proceeded to tip Harry’s head from side-to-side, inspecting it while occasionally running his fingers through it and pulling it out, measuring the length. When he seemed satisfied, he circled around to Harry’s side and began to cut.

Harry flinched at the first snip of the scissors and clenched his eyes closed, not wanting to watch his hair drifting down to the immaculate marble floor.

“Why are you so dressed up, anyway?” Draco asked over the snip-snip-snipping of the scissors.

“What makes you say that?” Harry asked, surprised that Draco had noticed. He wondered if maybe he had overshot the mark and should go home and change into something more casual.

“Please,” Draco said, the eye roll practically audible. “You’re wearing slacks rather than jeans, your collar is ironed, and you’re freshly shaven—or, at least you were before this whole debacle. You actually look like a professional who takes pride in his appearance and not like some mopey teenager.”

Harry thought it would’ve been rude to show up to his date in the same well-worn jeans that he usually liked to wear and that he should put in a little effort, but the fact that it was so patently obvious that he’d dressed up made him feel self-conscious about it.

“Oh, well… I actually have a, um… a date,” he said, dropping his voice and mumbling the last word. The snipping sound came to a halt and Harry held his breath, waiting to see what Draco’s reaction was. Though Harry wasn’t sure why he even cared what Draco thought about his dating life—or lack thereof.

“Ah, well, I’m sure she’ll appreciate the effort,” Draco said, voice suddenly crusted with frost that wasn’t there moments before.

Harry wanted to say something, but he didn’t know what to say. It’s not like he owed Draco any sort of explanation about what he did in his spare time, but even so, he still felt a weird compulsion to explain that it was only a first date and that he was just doing it to keep his family’s matchmaking at bay.

He fought the urge and they finished the rest of his trim in mutual silence, the butterflies in his stomach transforming into a dense lump of discomfort.

When he finished, Draco brushed the spare strands of hair off of Harry’s shoulder and then, without looking at him, turned around to put the scissors back in the drawer.

“We should get started on the interview. I wouldn’t want to make you late for your date,” Draco said flatly with his back to Harry. “If you don’t mind, could you please vanish the hair and I’ll meet you downstairs in the study.”

Without another word, Draco brushed out of the room, leaving Harry confused and unsettled in his beautiful, marble bathroom and left to clean up the mess.

~*~

The next few weekly check-ins with Draco were exceedingly routine and by the book. A frosty distance had formed between them, which made Harry realise just how friendly they had become prior to that. Not friends exactly, but no longer the enemies of their schooltime selves. Friend-adjacent.

Harry couldn’t put his finger on what had shifted between them, and any time he tried to broach the topic with Draco, the other man feigned ignorance and insisted that Harry was imagining things. It wasn’t until last week, when Draco had made a snide comment about not wanting to interfere with Draco’s raucous dating life, that Harry had begun to form a suspicion that Draco was perhaps jealous.

Harry had set him straight, telling Draco about the disastrous first date with Beryl a few weeks before in which Harry had taken her to his favourite Indian restaurant. She had been so awestruck and desperate to impress him that she had quickly agreed to his suggestion that they order a few different curry options and share them. What she failed to mention was that she was lactose intolerant, so Harry went ahead and ordered one of his favourite dishes, matar paneer. She was so afraid of offending him that she’d forced herself to eat a serving of it, only for her to become sick and have to spend the rest of the date in the loo. Draco’s frosty exterior started to melt away as Harry related the “memorable” date and although he had mimicked sympathy for the poor woman, he looked a little too pleased at her misfortune as he prodded Harry for all of the details.

Beryl was a sweet girl, but Harry could never foresee any type of future with someone that would rather give herself the runs than just be honest with him. On the upside, Ron felt so horrible about having set them up that Harry figured it had bought him at least a few more months free of matchmaking.

Harry felt a buoyant happiness as he Apparated outside the gates of the Manor and let himself in. It was a bright and sunny Friday afternoon and Harry was planning to take the afternoon off work and go for a hike, which is why he was here a few hours earlier than his normally scheduled appointment with Draco.

A tiny pang of uncertainty sparked to life inside of him as he knocked on the door, quickly dodging out of the way of the burst of fire—he’d very thoroughly learned his lesson. Draco was usually quick to answer the door, but Harry stood there knocking for several minutes with no sign of the other man.

Fearing something may have happened to him (attacks on former Death Eaters were not unheard of), Harry unlocked the door and let himself into the Manor with his wand aloft. Nothing seemed amiss in the entryway and there were no signs of a struggle, but Harry stayed alert as he tiptoed up the stairs towards a muffled sound that he couldn’t quite make out.

As he got closer, the sound both became recognisable and left him even more confused than he was before. His wand arm dropped to his side as he pushed open the door to Draco’s bedroom to find him belting out the lyrics to “I Want It That Way” as he stared into a mirror hanging on the back of his wardrobe door with a boar bristle hairbrush held up to his mouth like a microphone.

Harry stood there flabbergasted at quite possibly the weirdest sight he’d ever witnessed until Draco held up one of his clenched fists in a dramatic gesture and Harry lost it. He burst into a loud laugh as Draco whirled around with a look of shock on his face.

“Potter! What are you doing here?” he screeched as he chucked his brush away and sent it clattering across the room. Trying to play it cool, Draco swiped his hair back from his face as he stared defiantly at Harry. Unfortunately for him, his face was flushed pink with embarrassment and he couldn’t quite pull off a confident air.

“I came for the free concert, obviously. How on Earth do you know about the Backstreet Boys?”

Draco crossed his arms in front of his chest and stuck his chin in the air. “Granger has been teaching me about Muggles and their culture and she lent me a few of her CDs to listen to.” He was trying so hard to recover his dignity that Harry felt kind of bad for laughing at him.

Harry managed to compose himself for long enough to say, “I guess you didn’t get my owl?” Another round of giggles overtook him and even Draco’s menacing glare wasn’t enough to put a stop to them.

“Obviously not,” Draco spat, but then something seemed to occur to him and he whirled around to look at the mirror. “Why didn’t…”

Harry finally managed to quash his laughter and he walked up behind Draco, who was using his breath to fog up the mirror and then wiping it clean with the sleeve of his arm.

“I’m sorry, I tried to let you know I would be early. Hey, is that a foe-glass?” Harry asked as he stepped up behind Draco and got a closer look at the mirror, where a shifting swirl of black shadows was visible in place of a reflection.

“Yes, it is,” Draco said flatly. Harry turned an inquisitive look at the other man, trying to figure out what was making him sound like that. “I should have seen you coming, even without the owl.”

Harry was confused for a moment and then understanding dawned on him and he grinned. “Is that how you always knew when I was here and you were creepily standing ready at the door?”

Draco sighed and nodded. “But I don’t see you in it right now.” Draco turned to look at him and Harry was suddenly aware of how close he was standing to the other man and took a step back.

“So I guess that means… we’re sort of… friends?” Harry ventured.

“Ugh, don’t get carried away, Potter. Just because you’re apparently no longer an enemy, does not mean that we’re friends,” Draco said as he shut the door of the wardrobe with a little too much emphasis.

Harry couldn’t stop grinning. “Hey, D—I can call you that right, since we’re friends?”

Draco stomped off and shouted over his shoulder, “We’re NOT friends!”

“Since we’re friends, can you do me a favour and get rid of that infernal doorknocker?”

“That doorknocker is more valuable to me than you ever will be, Potter!

Harry laughed as he jogged along behind him.


End file.
